Netrepid increases performance 80%, reduces costs.
Leveraging Zadara allowed Netrepid to keep all of their storage on site within their own data center, while enjoying the economic benefits of a Storage-as-a-Service solution.
About the company.
Netrepid provides colocation, infrastructure and application hosting services that work side by side with a large variety of industries.
The challenge.
Netrepid, founded in 2004 in central Pennsylvania, is a leading provider of colocation, infrastructure and application hosting services, with offices and customers across the United States. The Netrepid data center is a carrier grade, Tier-3 data center providing redundant internet, cooling, power, and security. The facility maintains an annual SSAE-16 audit as well as HIPAA and PCI audits to ensure all current security measures are met. This facility provides colocation as well as hosting, virtual and cloud services.
Seeking a replacement for CapEx storage.
To support both their internal and external storage needs, Netrepid had standardized on Dell EqualLogic storage. As the company grew, the limitations of capital expenditure (CapEx) storage became apparent. As Chris Jones, Infrastructure Architect at Netrepid described, “We were confined to the storage we had purchased. To expand our capacity, we needed to invest a lot of capital and there was significant delay while waiting for additional EqualLogic storage to arrive and be installed. We were not able to be responsive to our clients, both internal and external.” To address the challenge, Netrepid investigated several solutions from traditional vendors, but they worried that those solutions might create a CapEx financial hurdle that could impact company scalability.
The solution.
Making a smarter choice.
Netrepid CEO Sam Coyl saw a Zadara Storage presentation at an industry trade show and immediately put their pending purchase on hold. After a comparison of the solutions, Netrepid chose Zadara. Leveraging Zadara allowed Netrepid to keep all of their storage on site within their own data center, while enjoying the economic benefits of a Storage-as-a-Service solution. They are now supporting the majority of both their internal and external applications on Zadara, including Citrix XenDesktop, Microsoft Exchange and SQL Server, and VMware virtual machines. As Chris Jones described, “Our agility and client responsiveness has improved dramatically. We can spin-up storage nodes in minutes rather than waiting a week for EqualLogic to ship us a new storage array.”
Overall, we are seeing 80% better performance with Zadara than with our prior solution.
Chris Jones
Infrastructure Architect | Netrepid
The results.
Hardware footprint reduced 81%.
Once all of the Dell EqualLogic equipment was replaced, Netrepid reduced their overall hardware footprint by 81%. This translates into significant power and cooling savings, while providing more room for future expansion.
From a performance standpoint, Jones described the results as, “Simply amazing! Overall, we are seeing 80% better performance with Zadara than with our prior solution. I love the snapshot functionality. It just works! Our data is protected and I don’t have to think about it.”
The Zadara SSD caching has been particularly useful for Netrepid. “I recently noticed we had a group of 70 to 80 VMware virtual machines that had a lag in performance. I simply turned on SSD caching and the problem went away. That was awesome!” commented Jones.
Adding advanced data management services.
Looking forward, Netrepid plans to leverage Zadara’s remote mirroring capabilities and the Backup to S3 service. With their block and file storage under control, they are also planning to deploy Zadara’s Object storage solution to support other critical elements of their business.
Netrepid, like many other leading companies, have recognized that traditional CapEx storage cannot keep up with their scalability, agility and economic requirements. By deploying Zadara, they address their need to significantly increase performance and reduce costs.
